The head coach of Kyiv “Dynamo” Alexander Shovkovsky summarized the results of his team’s match against Zhytomyr “Polesie” (2:1) in the 13th round of the Ukrainian championship on the YouTube channel FootballHub.
Alexander Shovkovsky. Photo — Oksana Vasilyeva— I congratulate the “Dynamo” fans on the victory. This is a very important result for us.
We understood perfectly that our opponent had a week to prepare for this match, while we had only two days after the Europa League match, and with complicated logistics.
If we analyze our previous matches after European cup games, we had enough strength in the first half, we played confidently, but in the second half we started to decline.
We understood all this. So, I repeat, this is a very important result for us in terms of the league table.
— Did you expect that "Polesie" would actively attack and press at the beginning of the match?
— We anticipated that. We anticipated that due to their freshness the opponent would offer us a high tempo, and we understood that it would be important for us to withstand it from the very beginning of the game. That’s why we prepared for a positional defense, considering the individual qualities of our attacking players. And, basically, our game plan in the first half worked. But after the break it became difficult. Regardless, the schedule is very tight, and the load on the players is very great.
— In the first half, we often emotionally prompted Shaparenko, calling him over to us. Was there something in his game that you didn’t like?
— Whether I liked it or not, there is a game plan that must be followed. Shaparenko was supposed to play more in tandem with Brazhko and perform the role of a second defensive midfielder during defensive actions. He didn’t always do that. Kolya likes to work with the ball, that’s a characteristic of him. But football is played not only with the ball but also without it.
Text transcription — Dynamo.kiev.ua, when using the material hyperlink is mandatory!
